DIVERSITY OF GLIADIN-CODING LOCUS ALLELIC VARIANTS AND EVALUATION OF GENETIC SIMILARITY OF COMMON WHEAT-VARIETIES FROM DIFFERENT BREEDING COUNTERS

Alleles of Gliadin-coding loci (Gli) found in genotypes of eighty-six varieties of common wheat from England, Omsk, and Chelyabinsk were ide ntified using polyacrylamide gel (pH 3. 1) electrophoresis of the whea t storage protein gliadin. The alleles most commonly found in each of these three varietal groups were identified. Alleles frequent in a par ticular region are assumed to be specific markers of those wheat plant traits that have particular importance in that region. Intrapopulatio n diversity ((mu +/- S(mu)), the portion of rare alleles (h +/- S(h)), the identity criterion (I), the genetic similarity (r), and the genet ic distance (D) were calculated based on our analysis of Gli locus all ele frequency. The least Gli locus diversity was in cultivars of Sarat ov origin (mu = 3.36 +/- 0.26) and the highest was in those from Omsk (mu = 6.31 +/- 0.35) and Chelyabinsk (mu = 6.15 +/- 0.33). In this cas e, the higher allelic diversity in Omsk cultivars as compared to Chely abinsk cultivars was caused by a higher portion of rare alleles (h = 0 .21 +/- 0.04 and h = 0.12 +/- 0.05, respectively). Interpopulation div ersity was higher for the Gli-2 locus than for the Gli-1 locus. The ge notypes of the common wheat cultivar groups studied differ from each o ther both at each of six Gli loci and, on the average, at all these lo ci. The cultivar groups from Omsk and Saratov were the most similar (r = 0.75, D = 0.28), and the cultivar groups from England and Saratov w ere the least similar (r = 0.13, D = 3.00). Generally, the cultivars f rom Omsk, Saratov, and Chelyabinsk are rather similar (on the average, r = 0.72) and differ significantly from the English varieties (r = 0. 22). The relatively very high value of the D criterion obtained from a nalysis of the Gli loci may be explained by the significantly higher p olymorphism of gliadin seed storage protein as compared with that of o ther enzymes used earlier in similar studies.